Ocean Currents
by child-dragon
Summary: A tauren shaman is washed up on the beaches outside the Scarlet Onslaught. While one of their priests tries to figure out where she came from, her companions are trying to figure out where she is - and then get her back by any means.


Proud sons of the Horde. The battlecry whispered in her ears as Warraven slid to a stop, her hooves digging into the wet earth, and turned to face the oncoming tide. She fell into stance, drinking of the earth, the spirits imparting their stability. The maces felt almost weightless in each hand, the leather worn where her fingers had woven imprints over long years of use. And at her back whispered nothing but the spirits of the air. The tauren snorted steam into the cool air and focused on the lead vrykul, the one that was a bit more eager to join the battle than those behind him.

There would be bloodshed enough for him and all those that followed.

It had been Molinu's fault, as it typically was, but Warraven could not find it in her heart to fault him. She had traveled all the way from the Barrens, across both Kalimdor and Azeroth, to the blasted lands of Draenor, and now to the frozen north with him. She knew by now what the orc was. So when the three of them – shaman, hunter, priest – fled Utgarde Keep before their hit and run was noticed and the alarm raised; she had a slight misgiving when Molinu had paused.

"Watching for pursuit!" he called, waving one hand at them to hurry up, his great tiger hesitating before returning to stay by his master's side. And Warraven had only exchanged a glance with their blood elf companion before falling back into a light run up the ramp to the cliffside. Vengeance Landing would be beyond that.

The roar that followed minutes later echoed through the tunnels, rolled down across the chasm, and threw Warraven completely off her feet. Eonthane had flattened against the wall, the sickly-looking priest casting a wild – and furious – glance back at where the explosion had come from. A cloud of dust was billowing behind them and out of it staggered Molinu, coughing and wiping dust off his goggles. His reddish topknot was coated with a fine layer of gray stone. His tiger looked quite unhappy at the grime in its own fur.

"Was that…?" Eonthane began.

"Support column," Molinu coughed, "Didn't look like one. I's just wanted to try out these new charges, see? See if they be any good. But then the whole column went down, and I thinks, wow! They work pretty good. We's better be going now – before the entire bridge collapses."

And so they had ran. Molinu's explosives had worked better than any watchdog could and Warraven could hear faint cries of outrage in the vrykul tongue. A signal fire flared up on a ledge of the keep and was quickly answered from the fortifications along the cliff edge. Warraven dropped her hands to her maces and unhooked them from her belt. There would be some difficulty.

They met the first group as the ramp swayed up and connected with the earth. Warraven went first, straight into the group of five, slamming her mace into the first one's skull, crushing the facial bones and leaving it a matted mess of skin, bone, and hair. A vrykul flanking her left staggered as an explosive shot tore through his kneecap, and was summarily drug to the ground by Molinu's tiger. Warraven kept moving, calling down lightning with a cry, the electricity filling her lungs and spilling out to ricochet from foe to foe. She didn't even notice the scores they were making, breaking through her armor with their pitted blades, as Eonthane was somewhere behind her, shrouded in holy light. They were a flawless team. Warraven carved a path for them and they continued running, parallel to the cliff edge.

They'd been eventually cut off. The keep was to their left, vrykul to the front and right, and nothing but open air behind them.

"As keen as you are to die heroically," Eonthane drawled, his orcish thick with his Thalassian accent, "I have a better idea."

"We're surrounded," Molinu grunted, "Make it fast, elfie."

"The cliff. There's water below us."

"Be like hitting rock at this here height."

Warraven hesitated, took a step back. The vrykul took that as a sign of weakness and charged as one. The shaman braced herself. Eonthane was yelling something but his words were dim in her mind, the swell of battle blocking out her reason.

"Warraven! Jump!"

Molinu's command managed to break through. She stepped back again, felt the cliff edge crumble at her hooves. Still, she hesitated. It was a long fall. And the water… she had always been afraid…

Eonthane lunged and grabbed her arm. The scrawny blood elf was not nearly strong enough to pull her along, but the added weight as he dropped himself over the cliff edge threw her off-stance. The haft of an ax slammed into her torso then, the impact going through her armor with a sickening crunch into her ribs. She saw a red haze for a moment, and then was freefalling. Dimly, she heard Eonthane say something and a feather drifted by her face. Her fall slowed and she looked around.

Molinu was ahead of them, floating serenely down by hanging onto his cloak that had stiffened into a parachute. Of course. Goblin engineering. And Eonthane drifted next to her, his hands drew together and his elbows angled out, the wind whipping his reddish-brown hair all about so she was hard-pressed to see his expression. The cliff drew further away and the water closer.

"Good save," she said. Eonthane was about to reply when his eyes went wide with shock. Warraven could not tell why… and then she fell. The spell broke, she felt the beginnings of pain crawl up from her shoulder and her eyes slipped sideways to stare at the javelin. She roared, wrenched it free, and flipped onto her back.

"Spirits!" she cried, throwing the weapon, and although she had no proficiency in it the spirits of the wind answered her cry, gleefully carrying the weapon up and returning it to the vrykul who had thrown it. He pitched over backwards, a banner of blood arcing from his throat.

And then Warraven hit the water and knew no more.

Molinu hauled himself out of the surf, shivering from the cold. There were icebergs not too far out. The current had carried him out towards the ocean before splitting. He managed to angle himself into the eastern current that carried them to the low shores of southern Howling Fjord. The second current had twisted west, no doubt past the coast of Grizzly Hills and to the steep shoreline of Dragonblight. He rested his hands on his knees, panting from the swim and spitting out salt water. Firestripe marched out of the ocean, lifting each paw as high as he could to keep from getting any more drenched than the great cat already was. And Eonthane collapsed in the surf, coughed up blood, and then forced himself to stand and make it the rest of the way to dry land. He stripped his robes off as soon as he could, shivering violently in only his underclothes and a thin black silk shirt. Molinu looked at him a moment and then trudged onward without a word, dragging some dry branches out of the brush and bringing it into the open. They needed a fire. As soaked as they were neither would get warm without one. And Eonthane was particularly prone to the cold.

"Did you see her?" the elf asked, spreading his robes close to the growing fire to dry. Molinu just grunted.

"Shoulda seen her," he replied, "She's got that… that… uh, spell. Runs around on top the water." He mimicked the motion with his fingers. Eonthane nodded curtly.

"Yes, she can walk on water, I know. But did you see her?"

The orc just shrugged and held out his hands towards the blaze. Eonthane cursed in Thalassian and sat down. Neither said it. Warraven had a horrible phobia of drowning that all her shaman training about the renewing aspects of water had failed to ease. If she were alright, she would have bobbed to the surface like a cork and cast her water walking as soon as she could think of it. But there had been no sign of a tauren standing on the river.

Mentally, Eonthane played the events in his head over and over. Molinu was going through his belongings, checking for water damage. The orc did not seem particularly worried, as he had been around Warraven a long time and trusted that she could keep herself safe. Eonthane had no such optimism. He frowned. He'd made sure to angle his jump close to hers. After casting levitation on himself he'd cast it on her, only mere seconds later. And when he twisted to see how Molinu fared - trying to ignore how high up they were and how sickening a fall it would be – that was when the harpoon had hit. He'd only heard a dull thud, barely audible over the sound of the wind and the enraged vrykul. It wasn't until he saw the harpoon go arcing back towards the cliff did he fully understand, but by that time it was too late, and Warraven had hit the water, her fall no longer slowed by any spell of his.

Water would be like rock at that height.

"We'd best not assume she's dead," he said, "If that were so, our search will be in vain. So, assuming she did not surface because she was injured, we can guess that the current carried her and that we'll find her somewhere where the tide grows close to shore."

"That's going to be hard to find." Molinu grunted and poked at the fire.

"We're not going to find it." The elf's eyes glinted under their sickly fel green glow. "We'll go to those who already know."

The tuskarr lookout had seen the pair approaching the village from the moment their steeds set foot on the island. They wanted to be seen. So he waited, hands wrapped around his spear. Many of the newcomers had come to this island. Some stayed and aided his people, others were just passing through. Still, he was cautious. They were strangers to him. As they grew nearer he swung himself off the small ledge, landing and moving to block the dirt path that led to the village of Kamagua. The two stopped short. The orc was hard to read, his eyes hidden behind goggles, and the bulk of him covered in mail armor patched together from various sources. His gun, slung over one shoulder, and his cat – however – spoke more about his nature than anything else would. He would be the dangerous one of the pair. The other was one of the despised blood elves… he frowned and the elf pretended not to notice. It wasn't that they'd done anything – no, the elves had aided his people – it was just that he didn't trust them. Any of them. Perhaps it was the way they carried themselves, or that green glow in the eyes. He could almost smell some sort of taint on their race, something that had cut away all ties between them and the earth. Their power was too complex to understand, and perhaps they believed they were superior for advancing to such heights, but the tuskarr knew there was more power in the storm and the ocean than they would ever obtain. Still, this one didn't appear to be a threat. He looked sickly enough and the shadows under his eyes almost looked like bruises from the contrast against his deathly pallor. The only brightness around him was his hair, shining red in the growing light from behind the clouds. Even his robes were dull from damp. They'd both been in the water recently, then. He could smell the salt.

"What brings you here?" he asked.

"We're searching for a friend," the elf replied.

"Tauren. About this high," the orc continued, gesturing, "an' she's got maces."

"We think the river carried her out into the ocean tides."

It wasn't much as a description went. The tuskarr scowled at the two and then stepped aside.

"If your friend fell into the current she may have been noticed by the fishers," he said, "It flows right past our village, carrying fish and other gifts of the sea. Go ask among those checking the nets."

The orc nodded his thanks and saluted him. The elf just walked past, heading for the huts beyond. The tuskarr watched them go for a moment and then climbed back up to his lookout spot. These newcomers… they weren't very hardy against the elements, it seemed.

The village sprawled across the western side of the island. The snows had crept in and were fighting a constant battle with the scarce grass that could survive this frozen wasteland. Out from the shore, past the lines and nets, were icebergs dotted with black lumps that could only be resting penguins. The tuskarr watched the pair as they walked to the town center, where a bonfire was blazing, and looked around. The smell of salt and fish hung heavy, mixing with the aroma of the fires sending up thin streamers of smoke, and the tantalizing smell of roasting fish.

After a brief word the two split up, heading towards opposite sides of the village. Molinu approached the fishers, who set aside their nets for a moment to listen. He talked loudly, gesturing in an attempt to drive home the understanding of just how _important_ this was. The tuskarr merely nodded, rubbed their whiskers, and conferred briefly before shaking their heads and telling the orc that no, they had seen only fish this day. Molinu dropped his head, mumbled his thanks and shuffled off, broad shoulders drooping.

Eonthane stood with two of the elder villagers. He held a vellum map in his hands and the two peered at the unfamiliar markings, trying to match it up to their own experience. One jabbed a finger at where the river broke free of the narrow cliffs and joined the ocean.

"Tide splits here," he said, "You and your friend came on the east tide, yes? Then you had best try the west. It travels along the shore, here, then this river pushes the tide further out into the ocean again. It doesn't come near the shore until later, at this small outcropping, and then ends at Moa'ki."

"So if she were carried by the western current we may find her here, or here." Eonthane circled the two locations on his map with some charcoal. The tuskarr nodded.

"Winds be with you," the elder said as Eonthane rolled up his map and walked away.

Molinu looked up hopefully as the elf approached. He was already stuffing his map back into his backpack and rearranging the straps to sit better over his shoulders.

"What did you find?" the orc asked.

"Two places she could have washed up. Moa'ki harbor, which we should check first as the tuskarr have a boat leading there. And… New Hearthglen."

"Scarlet Onslaught."

Nothing more needed be said.

Even as a fledgling, Warraven had been afraid of the water. They had taught her of renewal, that which cleansed the blood, healed the wounds, and made the land breath. So while other shamans looked and saw life, she looked and saw the dark unknown, the hidden depths and the treacherous currents that would drag one to their death. She saw the silence of a death that would never be known. It was this terror that drug her out of unconsciousness when she hit the water, fear alone keeping some part of her mind awake, giving strength to an instinct only to survive.

There was a pouch close at hand and she pulled a couple slick scales out of it. These dissolved between her fingers, spinning in the salt water around her before she breathed them in, the rush of water filling her lungs with oxygen. That would buy her time. She twisted, watching the streamer of red from where the javelin had hit float about her, and searched for the water's surface. Instead, she saw only vast emptiness and again the panic pulled at her.

She could feel the water pulling in multiple directions and she swam, fighting her way out of one current into another, one that seemed to hug closer to the cliffs. It caught her up in its grasp and she fought for the surface, not realizing how fast the current was moving. By the time it swept her up along the sheer rocks it was too late and all she could do was curl and protect her head as the tide smashed her body against the cliff. The last blow was too much and the dark haze finally won over.

Ruderick didn't care much for pretenses. It wasn't in his nature. He had been there when the damned Forsaken on their front yard blew up one of their catapults. He'd tried to at least speak some words of peace to the young man coughing up blood and dying at his feet, but they had pulled him back, yelling to get within the walls and prepare for a concentrated assault. And that assault had never materialized, the Light-cursed abominations slinking back to their vile settlement, and he'd watched the young soldier die alone. He gave up on pretenses after that.

Now they were yelling about trouble on the beach. The man grimaced and continued his descent along the narrow path down from the cathedral to the cliffs. The handful of other crusaders were right behind him and the one Raven Priest that had deigned to come along was still taking his time. Well, Light damn him and all his kind. Ruderick might not be chosen like they were, he might just be a lowly priest that had spent all his years knowing words and nothing else, but he knew how to get his hands dirty. If running got him to the beach faster… well, fine then.

Besides, he knew orcish.

He slowed his pace as he approached the commotion. A dozen or so soldiers were lined up with pikes. The weapons could stop a wild boar but somehow Ruderick doubted they'd have quite the same effect on the creature that was sprawled on the beach. The men shifted as he approached, not because he was their superior, but because they'd rather have Ruderick dealing with this. He absently touched his prayer book as he stared. Tauren. Female. She looked oddly pathetic, beached there on her stomach, stinking of salt and wet fur.

"Get those maces," he said, pointing at the nearest soldier, "Better they're in our hands than hers when she wakes up."

The reassuring click of a couple crossbows being armed sounded from behind him. The rest of the soldiers had caught up then.

Two men inched forwards, each grasping at a mace. The first managed to slip it from its tie and retreat; the second had some difficulty freeing it. No one had a chance to react when the beast finally awoke. She woke angry. She surged up off the sand, a couple hundred pounds of furious muscle and mass. The soldier was lifted off his feet and thrown bodily into the nearest pikeman. Three of them went down in a tangle of limbs. She wrenched the mace free, eyes wild, and charged the remaining soldiers. Ruderick backpedaled, slipping in the sand, and behind him the Raven Priest yelled for the crossbowmen to fire. Their shots went wild. The tauren plowed into the men, her mace crushing through the armor of the first, caving his chest in and leaving a shattered mess of bone and lung. The second received a bare fist to his face and he fell, thrashing in the sand.

Then she turned towards Ruderick. For a moment he met her eyes, wild, dilated and red, and she hesitated. Something – possibly the exhaustion from the ocean – caught up and she stumbled. Her eyes rolled back and she fell back to the ground, unconscious, directly at his feet. Ruderick didn't stop shaking until they bound her ankles and wrists, dragging her up the hill like an animal and to one of the cages they reserved for prisoners. Only then was he able to take his hand off his prayer book. He wasn't a soldier. There was a reason he wasn't a Raven Priest.

"What did you see, son?" the priest who had followed them asked.

He had returned to the top of the cliffs and stood in the courtyard, staring at the cage by the gallows that the unconscious tauren filled with her mass. The priest was younger than him by at least ten winters and yet he had the gall to call him son. Not father, not even brother. Ruderick's hand tightened on his prayer book and he prayed that the Light would give him patience.

"Madness," he replied, "Best pray to the Light that that cage is strong when she wakes again."

Molinu was talking to the High Executor. Eonthane had decided to suffer the cold and wait outside, not wanting to be responsible for the orc's actions. He'd taken it hard when they didn't find Warraven among the tuskarr and now the elf could hear Wroth explaining in rather gleeful tones how they didn't precisely _rescue_ prisoners. Just got their agents in when they could and left only corpses behind for the Scarlet Onslaught to interrogate.

Not the Forsaken kind of corpses, either. Eonthane closed his eyes and sighed softly at the sound of an angry orc letting out a frustrated battle cry and punching the nearest wooden support beam.

At least they had the sense to just tell Molinu that they hadn't sent in any agents recently and he was free to try and infiltrate their fortress himself. The orc stumped out of the building and into the snow as Wroth cackled behind him.

"Just keep in mind that if you wind up in a cage yourself," he called after the orc, "We won't be sending anyone to help."

Molinu was about to make a retort. Eonthane stepped between him and the door and the orc fumbled, just for a moment. The priest smoothly intervened.

"We're wasting time," he said, "Let's get moving before we lose our light."

"We can't sneak in while it's light," Molinu replied, his brow furrowing. Eonthane could just visualize the confusion taking place in those eyes hidden beneath the goggles.

"Yes, we can," the priest insisted, a wry smile curling over his lips, "We just need suitable… distraction. How much in the way of explosives do you have on you?"

The tauren had woken up, caged, a few hours after they drug her off the beach. Ruderick, accompanied by one of those ever-present priests, had attempted to converse with her. She had stared blankly at him for most of it, giving him the distinct impression that he was nothing but a raving lunatic, jabbering away at the cage in some unintelligible language. The Raven Priest just stood solemnly by. He saw her giving him looks and each time she did he saw the madness he had seen earlier flash in her eyes. Then she would look back at him and grow unfocused, dazed. He suspected that she was still addled by whatever had cast her into the ocean and washed her up on their shore. Finally he resorted to crude gestures.

"Ruderick," he said, jabbing a finger at his own chest, "Your name?"

The tauren blinked slowly and seemed to consider the words. Finally, she spoke.

"Warraven."

Ruderick sighed. There. That was progress. The priest shifted, looked about impatiently.

"You're wasting your time," he said, "Just let the interrogator take care of it."

"She'll rip his head off," Ruderick grunted, "Best if we get the beast talking now and then execute her and let the Light sort out her soul."

"The beast's soul is damned already."

Ruderick was about to reply when the tauren said something else. He spoke slowly, asking her to repeat it. That seemed to work. So she did know orcish… just wasn't fluent enough to understand much through his accent, probably.

"My maces," she said, "Where?"

"Not here," he replied firmly, "Where do you come from?"

Another pause.

"Mulgore," she finally said. Ruderick sighed and gently put his fingers to his brow.

"Not what I want," he sighed.

"Horde?"

"Ugh… how did you get to our beach?"

It took a couple more iterations of the question until she finally responded. She seemed almost gleeful, sitting up straight in the cage so that the top of her head barely brushed the metal ceiling.

"Vrykul," she growled, making a stabbing gesture in one hand, "Lots. Angry. Fell… one had a spear. Stabbed him back good. Very dead." She frowned. "Bad swim. No good… hit head."

She said something else, frowning for a moment as she picked out her words. Ruderick asked her to repeat it a couple times until the Raven Priest interrupted. He was getting impatient, wanted to leave the matter to more experienced hands instead of standing in the cold.

"She's talking," Ruderick sighed, "It's just hard to understand."

The only rank he had left was his seniority and even that was being slowly undermined. He tried to put that aside. The tauren was talking again and seemed remarkably calm about the entire situation. That alone concerned him. Then she said one word he understood quite clearly. Goblin. For a moment, he was puzzled at the significance of this word. She repeated it, he stared at her in blank confusion, and then the eastern wall exploded.

Eonthane crouched where the land started to slope downwards towards the coastline. The front gate was heavily defended but they had not shut it for the night. Not yet. There were about four guards at the entrance alone and more scattered along the path to protect their precious siege weapons, which were conveniently pointed towards Venomspite. At the moment the priest could care less about the uneasy silence between the two settlements. Open warfare would break out… eventually. For now, the priest waited.

He mentally cursed the cold and the snow. Even beneath his heavy cloak he was shivering violently and could only wistfully dream of Silvermoon and perhaps a blazing fire. He put that from his mind with an effort of will. Molinu was surely in place and readying the charges.

The explosion echoed through the sparse trees and faded away into the dull murmur of collapsing rubble. Molinu hadn't enough charges on him to create significant damage but a quick conversation with some of the more… agreeable Forsaken of Venomspite had quickly remedied that. They were all too happy to load Molinu up with more raw materials and had even suggested a weak point in the walls. The orc had gleefully trotted off like a child with a new toy and Eonthane had staked out his position near the gate, waiting.

Already the soldiers of the Scarlet Onslaught were moving towards the breach. No doubt they expected Horde warriors to come pouring in. Instead, they had one lone priest who broke his cover and skirted close to the walls. Two of the guards had left their posts and the other two were looked towards the interior, nervously awaiting orders. Eonthane took a deep breath. He wasn't very good at this sort of thing. He really needed someone else… someone to stand between him and whatever was trying to kill him. Sadly, that person was usually Warraven and unless he wanted to lose his protection he had to do this alone. Molinu would be leading the Onslaught on a merry chase elsewhere.

The blood elf took a deep breath, held it, and called up the power that boiled within him, raw power in his frail body and shaped by his mind. It burst out as a pillar of fire, blinding in its intensity. Eonthane felt the burn surge through his veins and he shuddered, fighting off the sudden rush of ecstasy and hunger that demanded he just give in, tap into that well and exhaust himself. He fought off the addiction, focusing instead on silencing the guard who had collapsed, tearing at his armor in a futile gesture to ward off the pain of the flames. The second guard had drawn his sword and was sprinting towards him. Their cries of alarm were drowned out by the commotion at the eastern wall.

Eonthane had been taught how to heal, how to flood a body with so much power that wounds had no choice but to close up and hearts continue to pump blood. He had also been taught how to reverse that process, using the same power to tear a body apart, flood the nerves with so much pain that it overwhelmed the senses. He had paid the most attention to the manipulation of the mind, however, and it was this power that he drew upon, smiling in sadistic satisfaction as the still-standing soldier stopped in his tracks, eyes growing unfocused as Eonthane's influence slipped into his thoughts.

The human resisted, of course. It was like a moth beating itself against the glass, trying desperately to reach the candle on the other side. Eonthane commanded the soldier to turn around, seeing with his eyes, and walk back towards his companion. The other soldier stared up in confusion, then mounting horror as his friend raised his sword up and brought it back down.

That broke the control. The man reeled, his mind screaming at what he had just done. No, at what Eonthane had done through him. And in his rage, the soldier turned and ran towards the priest, blind hatred clouding his judgment.

It was all too perfect. Eonthane smiled, and called down white fire.

It was easy to spot Warraven once inside. The humans were swarming the part of the wall Molinu had detonated like ants. The orc had only brought down the top of it, collapsing the first third down into the courtyard. They'd have it repaired before the end of the week, easy. Still, the dust in the air and the chaos provided Eonthane an opportunity to slip in, staying close to the wall, and survey the courtyard. A gallows stood in the middle, a grim reminder of just what he was dealing with, along with a handful of empty cages. There was one on the far side of the platform with two men standing near it. One was one of their Raven Priests and the other appeared to be a non-combatant. That one was staring at the cage and pointing to the wall, yelling something, obviously quite distraught.

Eonthane also noticed a bundle near the forge. The maces that rested on the pile of armor were very familiar.

The Raven Priest noticed him first. He reacted faster than Eonthane had hoped for and a brief jolt of power swirled into his chest, demanding his heart to stop. The elf reeled, composed himself and tasted a goblet of blood in his mouth. He spat it out and the Raven Priest's magic sizzled briefly against a barrier, leaving the smell of ozone behind. Eonthane could almost taste the human's frustration at seeing his magic absorbed by the shield.

The other wasn't even looking in his direction. He was staring at the cage, an expression of dismay written all over his features. A very familiar battlecry echoed across the courtyard and inwardly Eonthane groaned. Now the Onslaught was starting to notice what was going on in their very courtyard. He didn't have much time. He ran, crossing the distance, gathering his power about him as protection. The non-combatant was backing up and trying to pull the Raven Priest with him. The human only shook him off, eyes locked on the blood elf, and never saw the cage door until it hit him in the face.

Warraven had taken advantage of the distraction. She was braced against the back and sides of the cage, her hooves propped up against the door. Her warcry was that of the spirits and she pulled strength from the earth, demanding that the metal give way. And it had, screeching as a series of kicks had ripped it from the hinges and sent it flying – directly into the raven priest. He pitched backwards and Ruderick backpedaled, tripping over his own fallen companion and landing in the snow, staring in horror as the tauren unfolded from captivity, fire in her eyes.

"Warraven," Eonthane called out calmly, "Did you _aim _for that to hit his face?"

She hesitated, glancing back at the elf for a moment. A brief smile appeared and then vanished just as quickly. Eonthane gestured at the forge.

"Grab your weapons and move."

Ruderick was still trying to get away as she stepped forwards and picked him up by the front of his robes. She stared at him a moment, sniffed, and tossed him aside casually. He didn't see what happened next as he was picking himself up, only heard the Raven Priest let out a sharp cry, quickly broken off with a sickening crunch. The blood elf priest was looking down at him and Ruderick raised himself to one knee, silently forfeiting his soul to the Light.

Instead, a hoof landed square between his shoulderblades, pressing him into the snow but not crushing his ribs as she so easily could have. A large hand awkwardly patted him on the head.

"Nice human," she said in orcish, "Not smell like others. Not smell like death. Get out, yes? No stay here… go to Argent Crusade."

He tried to formulate some reply but she was already breaking into an easy lope, making a beeline for her weapons, the blood elf right behind her, pointing and yelling something about the crossbowman that had formed up. An arrow managed to hit its mark but the tauren just pulled it out of her hip and with a pause, the priest closed even that up. Ruderick lay in the snow, his heart pounding, staring at the hoof prints she had left. Each was as big as his head, easy. He silently resolved to spend at least three extra hours in the chapel reciting his prayers to the Light.

Warraven plowed through the small group that had managed to secure the front gate. She scattered them like water, not even stopping for a proper fight. Molinu was further along the path, sniping off who he could while Firestripe chewed on one of the guards near the ballista. The human's struggles had ceased and the body just flopped about like a rag doll.

"So, we good now?" Molinu asked. Eonthane nodded curtly, breathing hard and unwilling to waste his breath speaking. The three broke into a full sprint, leaving the half-hearted pursuit of the Scarlet Onslaught behind.

"How did you find me?" Warraven asked.

"Luck," Molinu grunted, "Hey, you mad about those explosives still? I used the last of them on that wall there."

She thought for a moment.

"You used all of your stock up?"

"And then some."

"Thank the Earthmother," she muttered.

Venomspite was peeking through the trees. Despite the smell of blight that clung to it Warraven welcomed the sight. It meant safety, some rest, and hopefully some food.

"If you're out of explosives," Warraven said, "I suppose it's okay then. I'm not mad."

"Oh good. You won't mind me getting more, then, right?"

Warraven's jaw twitched but she didn't say anything. The three of them just stomped into Venomspite, Molinu whistling happy and the sun turning the sky orange as it started to descend over Northrend.


End file.
